Painted sky

A familiar scene on my blip pages, but a new sky.

Elsewhere in my world
Today I had my hair cut.

About 10 years ago I went on a course about using arts in medical education. The opening exercise involved writing about our last trip to the hairdressers/barbers. Ollie a local doctor colleague and I looked at each other puzzled, we'd been given 30mins, what were we going to do with the other 29?. The girl doctors were lost in the exercise, when they got to read out their accounts, it was something of revalation for the boys. The idea that a visit to the coiffure was anything other than cropped hair and cropped conversation had never entered my mind, the extension of the visit to relationship guidance, holiday planning, parenting classes, retail networking, psychotherapy or some form of mindfulness had never entered our mind.

Nearly 50 years ago, my dad took his 2nd son to the barbers, his blond curly hair had confused passers by who had commented how pretty his daughter was. My hair was never curly again.

So today I had my hair cut, lately I've defected from my usual barbers, who have become worryingly stuck in the 1970's and developed a bit of a tremor too. I now go to a "unisex" salon - (why unisex, surely it should be multisex or bisex or just salon). They have one room for the women, and another for the guys (with lots of old cameras in cabinets and F1 memorabilia), and a shared room where the hair gets washed. So I get to see women with foil in their hair who look like they are here for the day (what's that about).
So the deal is that unlike my previous barber there is constant conversation, which was all right, we talked about our weekend plans, places to eat and the new formula one season. What slightly threw me was as I paid, I was asked to sign up to a loyalty scheme promising me a free hair cut on my 10th visit, the young lady dealing with me clearly had no idea that at my age and with my frequency of visits, having hair is bonus enough in 10 cuts time. Strange.